Sixty-two years ago I was up unusually late in my Arlington, Massachusetts home as my parents, my younger sister and I watched the coverage of that day’s nation-shattering event, the assassination, in Dallas, of President John F. Kennedy.
Like everyone else in my generation, much of that day is vivid in my memory, literally as if it were yesterday. My friend Paul Connolly and I were were walking home a little after 3:00 from Junior High West when Charlene Lamberis, a classmate, shouted out of her mother’s car as they passed us on the street, “The President has been shot! The President has been shot!” I had recently lost the election for president of the 8th grade, so my mind was still on my rival. I turned to Paul and said, “Who would want to shoot Marty Toczylowski?” (Marty is alive, well, and thriving today as an executive recruiter. I just checked.) Paul set me straight on what Charlene was referring to, and he pulled out his transistor radio. Soon a solemn voice announced that the President of the United States was dead, and that they would return to the station’s regular programming, whereupon wildly cheerful country fiddle music took over. It was so inappropriate we both couldn’t help laughing.
My friend came home with me and joined my mother, who was already in front of our old Capehart black-and-white TV console. TV news had never covered anything this important; all three networks and PBS were hustling trying to find new angles, scoops and people to interview. I’ll never forget that Paul, who was a brilliant kid, turned to me and said, with his face like a death mask, “Richard Nixon will be the next President.” It took five years and many twists and turns including a self-mocking cameo on “Rowen and Martin’s Laugh-in” (“Sock it to me?”), but Tricky Dick indeed was indeed the next President after Lyndon Johnson, sworn in as POTUS that day.
Ethics Alarms 